Our Week: Shakespeare and Frogs

This week was Shakespeare Week, both nationally and in our house. Now, I'm not a complete Shakespeare fan but he was a major influence on the language and I wanted the children to be aware of some of his plays, his times and some of the idioms which come from his writing. 

Thanks to the resources on the Shakespeare Week website, some junior versions and a visit to the Globe Exhibition, this was very successful. One of the children was absolutely fascinated and definitely wants to see the inside of the Globe and some real Shakespeare plays.

Apart from reading junior versions of Shakespeare and a story of his life, we used a story starter from the website, watched a junior version of Henry V, listened to a Shakespeare song, learned about idioms and related them to other books (e.g. Arthur in a Pickle). The BBC education site has some useful clips of life in William Shakespeare's day which were enjoyed. 

This is the end of Shakespeare Week but the Royal Shakespeare Company has free educational broadcasts. Home educators can sign up for these. The next is Much Ado about Nothing on 30th April. 


The younger two also set up a little experiment with cress seeds and different sowing conditions: dry/wet, light/dark, compost/paper. We have rather a large number of controls.

For me, the best part of the week was going to a local pond. We hoped that we would be able to see the frogs and some frog spawn and we weren't disappointed.
At first, we didn't see anything.

 Then there was some frog spawn

and finally, it became obvious that the pond was full of frogs.
There are at least two, under the water, in this picture. I think there might be a third. We saw loads more but didn't manage to take many pictures.

We did talk about the solar eclipse. There wasn't much to see in London due to cloud although the temperature dropped and the light levels went down a little but nothing like the more dramatic eclipse in 1999.

Of course, there was plenty of play. All three of my home educated children have been playing Minecraft together. There has been cycling and scootering and making space helmets which have rather depleted my supplies of kitchen foil.

We've been reading the Andrew Matthew's Shakespeare Stories, Mystery at the Globe, Pompeii: buried alive (to go with the Veritas self-paced history), Taking Root by Diana Kleyn and Joel Beeke and Lights in a Dark Place: true stories of God at work in Colombia.

Hope you have had a happy week.






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